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Leslie Stovall: morning this is Vegas law talk this Leslie
Stovall. Today I have Mr. John wanderer, who's been a dear
friend of mine for many years as a guest. John, would you like
say, hi. Hello, everybody. John, how long have we known each
other? I think my recollection takes me back to the mid 80s.
John Wanderer: That's your recollection is pretty quick.
It's vital that when you started practicing, I believe, Hey,
Unknown: John, the other day, I saw a movie called Ford versus
Ferrari. And I thought about you. I know you were part of the
Holman group or the Holman team, that have you seen that movie?
I didn't see the movie brought back a lot of memories. Not
exactly the most accurate movie on the world, but it was good.
It was good movie.
So John, John, tell me, what was your involvement with the
homeland group? And, you know, in the context of the movie, I
think that movie dealt with the 1966 LeMans race and the GT 40
project. So what was Homans involvement, and what was your
involvement with Holman at that time,
all under Modi, they were asked by Ford to undertake there have
a race. A number of the cars, basically in competition with
Shelby American Ford was not that enamored by Shelby and Ford
had done business with Holman and moody for many years. In
fact, Holman and Moody was pretty much the national
distribution center for all their high performance parts
back in the early 1960s. So when Ford decided to do this, I had
been involved with a number of different projects within Holman
and moody for Ford, Lexus, building their track cars, rally
cars, nothing's in that nature. And home at Ford requested. The
John Holman put me in charge of the homeowner moody GT project
for the 1966 and 67 LeMans.
So what did what did Holman moody do with the GT 40 to meet
that demand?
Well, we first got the cars, I think we first got our first car
or second car, I'm not sure which I can remember. I do
remember flying to California, with another person from home in
a movie to assemble one or two cars. And as far as a race car
goes, we thought there's a lot lacking here. One is profit.
First problem was it was too heavy. And there were other
problems with the cars. But Ford was taking care of those brake
issues and things of this nature and transmissions. Ford ended up
developing drone transmissions they were developing with Kelsey
Hayes company their own brakes. But in any event, we were we
were we took the cars, we got them back to Charlotte, we're on
Holman and Moody was located. And I was given quite a bit of
freedom to do with the cars is as we felt was necessary to a
tournament to better race cars.
What Where did the cars originally come from? You say
you took delivery of a car. So that sounds like
the actual chassis of the car was built in England. It was it
was a product of Lola company in England. All right. Sure. The
design was done by Eric broadleaf. not mistaken. And and
the cars were marketed as simply as a GT 40. They had a small
block Ford engineering. They weren't particularly marketed as
a race car. They were marketed and sold as a
sort of sportscar watch car. Yeah. Yeah.
We shall we first got involved with it. They tried to convert
the cut the streetcar into an actual race car. And they made
certain changes to it. And then at some point in time, in
Detroit, there's a gentleman by the name of Roy one that will
you in who ran who's an employee of Ford Motor Company, and he
ran a an engineering shop called Car Craft. And he was very much
involved with taking this standard GT 40 and making a race
car out of it. And he was the one who Ultimately, after they
decided the smallblock engine would not produce enough
horsepower, that they used the 427 engines that were developed
for the NASCAR side cars, right? Yeah, that's quite a different
motor than what was originally in that car. Absolutely,
absolutely. And had to be changes made to the chassis to
hold that car. That engine, which was
the cars, the cars that you're receiving at home and moody,
moody, were those 427 motors in those
days, those cars were had been adapted for the 427 engine. What
we did was go out to Shelby shop, there are some basic
chassis, we hung the suspension pieces on it, fitted the body to
it, and then took the cars back to Charlotte.
So what kind of things are you doing to the car in Charlotte
before you started campaigning, or racing that particular
vehicle?
Well, from the very start, our objective was to make the car
lighter and to make the car safer. The cars didn't have roll
bars, the fuel cells that were in them quite heavy or the whole
side, left and right side of the car. Between wheels is all fuel.
And they had these very heavy fuel cells that apparently
Shelby American had developed it acquired. And we felt that they
were all too heavy, which wasn't wasn't part of our progress is
to lighten this car up. Right. So we put first with the roll
bars and we had lightweight fuel cells made from the Firestone
company.
Well you change suspension pieces to did you know,
we did change suspension piece if we had all our own springs
made. The shock absorbers made. We had our own stabilizers made
the cars ran at Daytona Beach. And because the engines in the
rear of the car and and there's a lot of loading on the chassis
and in the high band corners. We developed a an auxilary torsion
bar to go on the right rear to support chassis. If you put a
spring in there was heavy enough to run through the high banks it
would be too heavy. And the two heaviest spring in the LeMans
flat part of the Daytona track. Oh I see. So it was lots of
things we did the cars we the oil tanks was up front and meant
the oil lines had to come down through the passenger
compartment made the inside of the car extremely hot. Best
thing to do was move the oil tank rear. They had the
aftermarket Stewart Warner fuel pumps that you can go buy at the
auto parts store the auto parts store, very unreliable. We went
and sourced a an aircraft fuel pump the pump that was actually
inside the tank, which in those days as far as automobiles go
unheard of. But we concluded if they're safe enough airplanes,
they're safe enough for this race car.
So how long after you got your cars? Did you come to race in
LeMans? Because the Ford and Ferrari show was about I think
it focused on the
60s 66 LeMans race actually, as soon as we got the cars. There
was a race in Daytona Beach, which was referenced in the
movie. We had two cars in that race. One had an automatic
transmission that Ford was experimenting with the other
car, ran in the race and actually finished second at the
tone race. The next place we ran into cars was at Sebring where
Ford won the race was a Shelby car. It was a a version of the
GT 40. Mark Two was an open top car that Roy Leung had had
built. Right. That car won the race set a new record. And
Holman moody car finished second.
So tell me about the LeMans 66 race that the show was based on
or part of at least you how many cars did you take over to run
that race?
In 66, we built four cars. Three of them that were run by almond
mot, they were all GT 40 Mark twos, the 427 engines, and a
fourth car that we built to be run by afforda France.
So what about Shelby how many cars they take for that six,
six, right? They
took three cars over there.
So how did that race go? I mean, it seemed like a pretty exciting
race. From your perspective, what was what stood out to you
in the six to six months
in the 66 bonds race is it was we I thought it was a pretty
ordinary race. We had some different issues. We had
problems with the brakes. Mons, you have a straightaway a little
over seven miles one. You're dealing with cars that go over
200 mile an hour and the end of that seven miles straightaways
are sharp right hand corner and the cars stencil breaking. If
you were out there, you would see that these discs and these
cars are red hot. What happened is reminds were 24 hour race.
You racing to three o'clock in the morning. It's cold out lots
of humidity. And the we found that the the desks were
undergoing thermal shock and resulting in them flying apart
literally a piece of the iron flying off of the disk.
How did you guys remedy that? Or were you able to you just kept
kept changing discs? Right. Right. I wanted to ask you
before we talked about the finish of that race, which was
depicted in the movie. You would have told me in the past that
Andretti was driving was he driving for Ferrari?
No. Oh and drive he was driving for
okay he did he have a crash during that race.
He didn't crash in that race. He crashed in the 67 race I see
which caused a chain link events which actually took out his car
and two of the other cars at home are moody it built
and you built cars for Andretti later on in your career with
Holman moody, correct.
I did. It was a circuit a sportscar series in the United
States and then called the Ken Ham series. They were basically
unlimited sports cars and the the the top cars in those days
were the Chaparral was sponsored by General Motors right the plan
clarens which also had sponsorship from financial
health from General Motors. And Ford really didn't have a car in
the in the race at that time with a car was designed in
England by shoppers run by Alan man. Alan man is the guy who
built the the car and for the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang movie.
Right, right. The car you saw floating in the air with the
wings on Yeah, and that was an actual car that Alan man had
built for the movie. And Alan ban designed the cam car. Not he
personally but I forgot the name of the actual designer. With
that car was built with the idea in mind that Mario Andretti
would drive it in the canyon series
Eisley and so well Paul Newman was also part of that cannamd
racing.
Well, that's what got Paul Newman interested in. In racing
at all. It was his first. That was his first introduction to
sportscar racing.
Well, that's really interesting. I want to go back to the six six
LeMans. Did did Ford actually tell those cars to slow down and
come across together?
While we'd already told the cars to slow down because we wanted
to make sure that they finished. And the competition by this time
they dropped out. So the cars were lapping probably 10 seconds
slower than what they would have been if they had been racing.
And yeah, for dead for publicity purposes. They wanted the cars
the front to to be in the picture of coming across the
finish line in the first three spots and had them line up that
way.
Did that actually cause Ken Miles to lose that race?
It did. Why can miles thought he was ahead. And he actually came
across the finish line a couple of feet ahead of Christmas Amon
or Bruce McLaren, who was in the other car thinking that he had
won the race because he crossed the finish line first. But the
organizers of the race ruled to the contrary. They said because
the Chris Amon Bruce McLaren car had had started further back in
the pits behind the starting line that they had actually When
you took that into consideration, they had actually
traveled a greater distance than the Ken Miles car. So they got
to win. That's terrible. And Ken Miles was very I understand very
upset. I didn't have a lot of input. A lot to do with Ken
Miles. I've been talking to him and he seemed like a very nice
guy.
Well, between 66 and 67 LeMans races. It was at when Ken Miles
died. Yes, not what you were actually present on the
racetrack. One was, what what happened? What what car was he
driving what happened to Ken Miles as he was driving
a car that was called the J car. The J car was a creation of Roy
Lund, who we spoke about earlier, right. And it was a car
that was built out of aluminum honeycomb structure. And it was
the the tub we call it or the chassis was actually built by
for Ford, by Brunswick aerospace, right. And into this
aluminum honeycomb structure. They had various brackets, which
all the suspension was bolted to, et cetera. And that was the
J card and the J car had a funny looking body on it didn't have
the greatest stability. It was light. It was fast. It basically
had the same engine as the as the mark twos did, that'd be the
427 427. Right? And so they were testing the car at Riverside,
California on the road course, they had lost control of the car
at the end of the straightaway and went off the track. And the
honeycomb structure basically all fell apart. And in Canada
was killed.
You were you were we were talking about this at one time.
And you said you disagreed with the Ford analysis of what
occurred in that crash? Well,
it was no real Ford analysis. It was a test report from the
Shelby American people. I have a their version was that there was
a mechanical part of the car broke, causing the crash. I saw
happens that over the back stretch of Riverside Raceway,
there was a pedestrian overpass which you could go on stand on
and look at the cars as they went by. And myself and a fella
by the name of Homer Perry, who was worked for Ford special
vehicles, and was the person who was in charge of all of the
LeMans programming. He and I were looking at the car as it
went by. And it appeared to us that due to instability the back
of the car came up, caused the car to spin out. And that's what
caused the accident. That was not in the show people report.
And in fact, after Ken Miles's accident the frame was the
honeycombed was constructed differently, or it was assembled
differently. Is that correct? Yeah, the
first thing that happened was is is Ford put the car away. Ford
Ford was very adverse to bad publicity. So the car
disappeared. And and that reappeared a number of months
later, as a Ford GT mark four. And that's the car that you see
winning, who actually won the 67 race. And if you saw the movie
of
Ford versus right, a Ford versus
Ferrari, and at the end, there were Ken Miles got in the car
red car and drove off. And then you see the cloud industry
crash. The car he got into was in fact, a marked mark for the
mark four it was really the jaycar Oh, the difference thing
is is had a new tail and no longer had the the short, boxy
tail that the jaycar head. And of course they did have made a
lot of structural changes to the to the honeycomb chassis. So the
problem never really occurred ever. When the car was recreated
as the mark for it was no longer any
chassis issues with what you told me they even riveted the
chassis differently.
They did start with the honeycombs chassis, which the
honeycomb itself was about an inch, probably an inch, maybe an
extra quarter inch a thick and originally, all of it was glued
together. It was all flat panels and they were just glued
together. And then the the bracketry was riveted but not
all the way through the honeycomb What's spacers between
it stopped collapsing. Right? It was just riveted to the skin.
And it was glued. Everything was glued. Right. So when the car
was recreated as Mark for all of the glue joints on the honeycomb
tub itself were reinforced with angle irons that were glued and
riveted through all the way through the honeycomb. And all
of the bracketry holding the holding the the engine, the
suspension pieces, all of that was properly installed. blued
and riveted always.
How did your cars do and the C seven was raised?
Well, we had the two Mark fours and the mark three and the
Shelby had the same. The mark the with the mark for the Mario
Andretti was driving one of the mark fours for us. And he ended
up crashing. And when he did crash, just by coincidence,
another one of our mark fours got swept up in the same
accident, as did the mark two for Florida France. Oh, man, and
that left us with only one mark to left. And it has some form of
mechanical trouble and was out of the race. Shelby's cars.
Their mark two fell out of the race. Their Mark, one of their
mark fours fell out of the race. And the only car left was one
mark four, which was really driven by Dan Gurney and AJ
Foyt, they make it through and they won the race.
There you go. And those are really another set of drivers
that were very well known and famous for their driving skills.
Wow. Well, you your work with Holman moody really sounds well,
it's very interesting.
Lots of projects started out with the Falcon rally cars in
1962. And then, I was in then we built 1964 We built the Mustang
rally cars. I was in charge of building those, went to Europe
with them and actually drove one of the service vehicles and
stopped along the way and, and fixed the Porsche was being
driven by Ferdinand Porsche. All right, I fixed it as a shock
absorber amount had broken I stopped and fixed it for
well, you from rally cars, you went to funny cars. Well, I call
him funny cars. I think you had a different designation for him.
They have Ford abilities, saying a little head game cam engine
for 20 sevens for use in NASCAR and NASCAR wouldn't allow him to
run them. So Ford decided to use them as drag cars. And they sent
10 Mustangs down to Homer moody and I was in charge of modifying
the cars to put these engines in them and altering the wheelbase
on rear wheels and move forward three or four axes completely
different front suspension in order to get the cars at the
entrance into cars. So we built those 10 Those went out to
factory for drivers around the country and and then and then
the some of the those cars were called FX cars factory
experimental. And
those are the ones you'd see on the just a drag race right
straight quarter mile
straight quarter mile drag race now pretty much pretty much
standard looking Mustangs. Yeah, I had fiberglass fenders on
fabric as decklid and these big very large engines.
Yeah, but they were cranking it on a quarter mile. Yes, they
were.
But they they evolved into a tirely different car. After we
built those 10 I was in charge of building for more of the
cars, which had extended front wheelbase the front wheels were
moved I think 18 inches forward. So had very long goods, the
engines will move back. The bodies were now totally
fiberglass. There wasn't nothing on the cars that came off of a
Mustang. Though they did look like a Mustang because there
were funny cars. Nowadays, the funny cars don't look like the
car anymore, right? And those days and the night 19 6060 Force
1965 the NIHR rules were pretty strict, the car still look like
a car
and where the term funny car come from.
I'm not sure where it's picked up. I guess it was just because
the deviation from the standard car
was funny. It was funny looking. Yeah. And from your funny car
project, then you went to the GT 40 project. Is that correct?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yah, yah, yah, I was put in charge of
the GT cars after the track cars. And then after GT, you
went to the cannamd. Then we built the cannamd car for Mario
Andretti. And after that, what did you do after that? That was
the end of that was beginning around 1968. And that's when
Ford decided it was going to stop racing on anyway, when for
when Ford when Ford quit racing and 68. They actually did some
racing and 68. They built another can Amkor. But they,
they stopped all of the they stopped all of the GT race
stuff. And stuff you were doing. The stuff that I was doing is
that when you went to law school, as soon after, I stayed
all through 68. And John Holman, decided that he could make a lot
of money, taking wrecked diesel trucks, and wedding different
frames together and making one out of two pieces. And the end.
So we did that for a while. But I didn't have a lot to do with
that. Right It was going on. So I decided that it was time for
me to move on. And so on January 119 60, and I'm packed up and
left and left on good terms at home. And when it came time to
go to law school when I use the money. John Holman just sent me
money
that was very generous, and
ultimately sent it back and gave it back to them. But there's no
strings attached only strings attached was he says, If I gave
you the money, you will maybe you'll come back.
Sounds like a nice guy.
You're a nice guy.
You in fact, are featured in the history of John of Holman moody.
There's a book
out there is there is in that book pretty extensively,
right? Was Dottie involved in writing that book, by the way,
no. Daddy's Daddy,
Daddy, Daddy Parker at the time, and then was Daddy wonder. She
was John Homans executive secretary. That's how you met.
That's how I met Dottie. And we were married in 1860 67. I
believe
I have nothing but fond memories of Dottie. She's a wonderful
person. wonderful person.
She almost didn't marry me because I wouldn't take her.
Did you take her to Mons? Oh, oh,
no, I wouldn't. I had decided that nobody would go from Holman
and moody, who didn't have a specific job need to be there.
There were a lot of different employees thought that they
should give me a comment. I said no, no, no. There
you go. John, I've really enjoyed talking to you. I'd like
to invite you back. Would you be willing to come back? Sure.
Well, that'd be wonderful. Again, it's so nice seeing you.
It's always a pleasure. Thank you very much, John.
You're welcome. Good to be here.
Thank you.